HONEY FOR THE BEARS

                             Chapters 1-3

 

Chapter One

Paul, or Pavel, Hussey, (or "Gussey", as the Russian say invariably changing a Latin aspirate in a voiced velar stop) and his wife, an American from Hampstead, Mass., called Belinda because of her father love of (1) The Rape of the Lock, are at sea, heading for St Petersburg. They are in the Cultural Saloon of the ship Isaak Brodsky, treated to the music of an approved Soviet composer, Stepan Korovkin. The music, a symphony Number 14 in D, is contested by an extremely old sexless creature in a wheelchair, called "Doctor" by his attendant Madox.

The old creature (called "Dr (2) Tiresias" throughout the novel) is delivering continuous anti-Communist attacks, such as: "I knew St Petersburg when it was a proud imperial city, when ball-gowns came from Paris and the gentlemen wore London-tailored morning coats", or: "Believe me, I have known them since before their Lenin and Trotsky were ever heard of. They even count with bead-frames."

The audience (some pro Russian English students - "Little Sputniks" - and a homebound delegation of Soviet musician), protests. As the roar ensues, Madox implores Paul for a diversion. Paul, feeling a pentecostal wind blowing through him, cries:

"How about (3) Opiskin?"

In the roar which grows bigger and bigger, one hears the litany: "Formalistic deviationist. Defector to Viennese Serialism. Traitor to Soviet art. Misrepresenter of the Revolution. Polytonal lackey...". (Opiskin obviously stands for (4) Shostakovich). Paul is suddenly tapped on the shoulder and he expects repression ("irons for the rest of the voyage"!), but instead he is informed by the sweet cabin stewardess that the ship doctor ("Vratch") has come to have a look at his sick wife.

The ship doctor turns to be a beautiful girl in ear-rings and ill-fitting cheap dress. She is accompanied by a woman who occasionally surfaces from the galley to interpret and to improve her accent. (This constant desire to improve one’s knowledge of English and Western civilisation is a recurrent theme in the book. It is a trait which, in contemporary St Petersburg, has disappeared, together with the wish to buy consumer goods, substituted now by an impellent desire to sell, sell Soviet merchandise in the shape guidebooks, calendars, matrioskas, military hats, a.s.o.).

Both the Englishman and his American wife are still frightened by what they expect to be the rigours of a military regime and the secret police. A farce-like scene follows, with the ship doctor ferreting Belinda’s belongings. Paul, misinterpreting the action, decides "to hide nothing": he takes a key-ring from his back pocket and opens up the suitcase, a blue shabby one. Lukerya comes to look. Ten dozen drilon dresses, half the total consignment - daffodil, midnight, cinnamon, primrose, rose-blush, blood, peach, orange are revealed whereas the doctor and Lukerya were looking for the source of a likely substance to which Belinda might be allergic:

But the two Soviet women were at once darting round the cabin like flames, Lukerya pushing past Paul to get to the clothes-cupboard, the doctor dragging suitcases from their hiding-places - under the lower bunk, behind the floor-length drape of the tablecloth. (p.13)

 

Now, in the course of the first chapter and a half of the book we find gathered together, as in a shavian play like Pygmalion, all the actors from which the motion of the next four acts will spring, gathering momentum with surveying complications in the middle, or acme or climax, followed by the final dénouement which will leave everybody differerent, if not the opposite, of the characters we met at the start. In Pygmalion they are all convened in front of the theatre at Covent Garden and here, in Honey for the Bears, in the Cultural Saloon of the cruising ship. When it is not the characters who appear as generators of action in the wonderfully confined space of the first chapter and a half, it is the prop: in this case ten dozen coloured drilon dresses first springing to our attention in a brilliantly coloured cascade The appearances and disappearances of these clothes inside their two suitcases all along the book generate a frantic rhythm which is remindful, to keep to the theatrical similitude, of the chaining of events in some well-made pochade by Georges Feydeau, such as Le Fil ŕ la Patte or Occupe – toi d’Amelie.

The economic background of the plot involves also the appearance of a ghost, Robert, whose presence will grow more and more marked as the story unfolds. Twenty dozen chemical fabric dresses (distributed in the two suitcases), bought wholesale at thirty shilling each, sold at fifteen roubles each to a certain P.V. Mizinchicov.

"Fifteen roubles at the unrealistic Gosbank rate was, say, six pounds. Total gross profit for Robert, say, one thousand and eighty pounds; net profit (deducted fare, subsistence, drinks and smokes) about one thousand… the risks were nugatory; Russia was far more free and easy than, say, police-happy Britain. He (Robert) was going to do it again this year."

He’d died instead, "in a bed full of drilon dresses."

 

 

Chapter 2

In this chapter we are presented with the invasive (5) zany Yegor Ilyich, who is in charge of the first-class dining saloon and looks after his cabin passengers. He bounces in, drinks and shares with Paul the bottle of Soviet cognac that he finds in the clothes-cupboard and he’s not to be seen again till, on another boat, he will usher in the dénouement.

 

Chapter 3

Robert makes here a strong and abrupt reapparance between the lines.

Height thirty-five thousand. Fifteen miles off target area enemy night fighter reported. A beam attack. Starboard engine on fire. Flak cut away a big chunk of port wing. Out of control (intercom dead, said rear gunner).

Paul woke up startled to find himself naked and sweating on the red leather settee by the forward bulkhead. But they got home, Robert got home. And then he played his gramophone records… lying fully clothed, his eyes glossy, on his bed : Brahms, Schubert, Schönberg, Prokoviev, (3) Opiskin, Holst, Bach, anonymous ancient plain-chant. 

These two refrains (or is it a trinity ? Robert - music - dresses) will accompany the whole action of the book, but the immediate material causality for constant action is represented by the two suitcases, with their drilon dresses, impelled in their voyage from ship to Intourist office at the Sea Terminal, to Hotel Astoria, to baggage deposit at the (6) Ermitage, to Alexei Prutkov’s pad near the Kirov Work Metro stop, to Dom Knighi, the Book Shop, at five o’clock of a busy afternoon, first inside the shop near the till where Paul makes a stool of two of them (the other, the ‘clean’ one, having been left at the Metro to reappear later at the Police Station) and then in the open street, by which time we are in part II, midbook, p.137.

Now Paul, woken up from his nightmare close to midnight and finding that he is very thirsty, tries to get a drink in the first class passenger club of the Cultural Saloon where a blasphemous godless fancy ball is proceeding, animated mainly by steverage students, visiting English students (they call themself "Little Sputniks") in sympathy with the régime and their superviser Miss Travers. Once again, Opiskin is vilified.                         

                                                                 © Liana Burgess

Part One 4-7

Email: peter.patti@t-online.de.